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GATINEAU – Seriously, it can’t. As this goes to press, the title to the September 25th The Source feature on Che Guevara reads “Che Guevera’s not chic.“
“Guevara” is a common Spanish surname and the name of a village in Spain’s Basque Country. It is not spelled “Guevera.” Does Sun News really have nobody to check on these things? Especially when the blurb for the story actually spells the name correctly.
Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a physician who joined the Cuban revolutionary movement in the 1950s and was instrumental in the overthrow of US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara worked in volunteer labour and pushed for racial integration in Cuba’s school. He was assassinated on orders from the CIA in 1967. He is revered as a martyr, freedom fighter and symbol of Latin American dignity throughout the developing world.

Sun News’s Ezra Levant fabricated an took the opportunity to slander Guevara, with his guest accusing the revolutionary of executing over 1000 people in just one year. The most authoritative, well-researched and comprehensive biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson’s “Che Guevara, a Revolutionary Life,” states that 55 people (mostly war criminals) were executed on his watch. The guest went on to state that the Batista dictatorship claimed only 700 lives over 9 years; in fact some estimates put Batista’s victim count at 20 000.

But truth has never gotten in the way of Sun News. That’s why Levant suggested a Che t-shirt should arouse the same indignation as a shirt bearing the likeness of Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler. Millions died under Stalin’s heal. 17 million died in the Holocaust alone; millions more died under Hitler’s rule before the Holocaust and as victims of his war.